


And Now I Need You Here

by ellatrobbie



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Secret Relationship, at this point at least, kind of, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellatrobbie/pseuds/ellatrobbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He thinks he gets it now."</p><p>Or. </p><p>Sloan and Don do their own thing. And keep it professional at work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Now I Need You Here

**Author's Note:**

> a) This is a work of fiction, borrowing characters from the genius mind of Aaron Sorkin because while he is genius he sometimes takes his time. Not intending to steal anything etc etc. 
> 
> b) Title is taken from the lyrics to "You are the best thing" by Ray LaMontagne, which is a song I believe pops into Don's head every time he sees Sloan, because have you see that smile thing he does?
> 
> c) When I started writing this I intended for it to be set sort of now amongst the Genoa drama, but as I was finishing it I feel like it would be better sometime in the (near) future when the dust has sort of settled. But that parts not set in stone, so it's really up to interpretation.

The knock on his door stirs them from the movie they were watching; she’s laying horizontal, head propped up on most of the few cushions he owns, and her legs in his lap.

“Don’t drink my beer,” he warns as he pushes himself off the sofa. She makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like she heard him but is choosing to ignore him and he makes a mental note to remember to grab another couple beers from the fridge on his way back.

Speaking of- who was knocking on his door at 9pm on a Sunday night? Probably a neighbor. He has nice neighbors, a little weird but they keep to themselves and they never complain when he listens to music too loud. Sometimes they sign parcels for him and – when did he start to ramble? He has been spending a lot of time with Sloan.

Whoever it is knocks again by the time he reaches the door, and his apartment isn’t that big so they must be impatient.

“Hel - Maggie?” He looks at her, confused. He hasn’t seen her outside of work in months. And it’s a little weird. “Is everything okay?” She looks a little flustered herself, and shakes her head, blonde hair falling over her eyes.

“Oh yeah, no I’m fine. Just – Mac wanted you to get this before you got into work tomorrow. And she was going to messenger it, but I was, um, I’m meeting some friends nearby so I said I could do it.”

She holds out a brown envelope and he takes it. “Oh. Thanks,” he nods, looking at the envelope in his hands and hoping it’ll tell him what to say next. No such luck, so he has to think of something on his own. “You were working on a Sunday?”

“Just catching up on some stuff,” she shrugs, and bites her lip. “How’ve you been?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” he says pointedly and she gets this expression that reminds him of Bambi so he knows he’s said the wrong thing. Damnit. “Uh, do you want to come in? I mean, we’re just watching a movie, we can -”

Her eyes shoot up to look at him, “We?” She asks, and her mouth forms that little ‘o’ of realisation. “You have – of course. No, I’ll just go. I’m meeting friends anyway so...”

“You sure?” he asks, and realises that the way he’s holding the door already half closed is pretty self-explanatory for both of them. She nods. “Yeah. I don’t want to interrupt. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He nods back, “Sure, see you tomorrow.” She turns to leave before he even finishes the sentence and he wonders for a split second if they’d still be together now if he never found out about that video.

He closes the door and turns back to the room, sees her sprawled across his sofa, checking her phone as she waits for him to finish. Her glasses have dipped halfway down her nose. He smiles and thinks probably one of the most selfish things that have ever crossed his mind: that video was maybe the best thing that ever happened to him.

She doesn’t look up until he’s standing at the edge of the sofa, lifting her legs so that he can sit down and lay them across his lap. The movie is still paused; he remembers enjoying it before but now he can’t quite remember what it was even about.

“Who was it?” She asks, stretching to put her phone back on the coffee table.

“Uh, Maggie. She had to drop this off,” he says, holding up the envelope that was still in his hand before tossing it onto the coffee table as well. He’d look at it later; it’s unlikely that Mac would send him something super urgent without at least a dozen emails beforehand. Sloan looks like she’s about to ask why Maggie was dropping something off that could’ve easily be Fedexed or whatever, but she thinks better of it and he wants to kiss her for it. Well, he always wants to kiss her so...

“Why didn’t you invite her in?” “I did. But when she found out I was with someone she kind of bolted,” he shrugs.

Sloan sits up a bit more, “Does she know it was me?” He shakes his head slowly, sensing danger.

“No.”

“Why?” Her glasses fall a little further down her nose as she tilts her head.

He sighs. “Because she’d freak out and we’d feel bad and we’d never finish the end of this movie.”

She looks at him pointedly, “That’s a terrible reason.”

He sighs again, louder; this is turning into exactly the conversation he was hoping to avoid. “Do you want me to call her and tell her I’m with you?”

“No,” she says quickly, too quickly almost and her eyes soften.

They made this keeping-a-low-profile decision together, but he definitely didn’t want to repeat any of the things that happened with Maggie, including letting his relationships become office gossip. They’re not sneaking around. Mac and Will know, because they felt like they needed to know, and by some miracle no one else has found out yet.

He glances at her, takes her hand from where it’s playing with the hem of his T-shirt and rubs his thumb over it slowly. “Look. We’re not sneaking around. We’re just doing our thing, and keeping it professional at work.” That’s important for her, she’d worked too hard for her position to let anyone assume otherwise. He’d told her that it’s unlikely anyone would assume otherwise but she’d given him that look that means he didn’t really get an opinion on that matter.

She tilts her head again; although this time there was smirk on her lips, “Except for that-”

He lets out a low laugh. “Except for that one time where _I_ stopped us before we got into trouble,” he finished, pulling the hand he was still holding to his mouth and kissing her palm softly. “Besides, the more professional we are in the office, the less professional we can be here.”

She laughs, or starts to, but she pushes herself forward at the same time and kisses him gently on the lips. She moves away, not far but just far enough. He shakes his head, a smile firmly on his lips and lets go of her hand to wrap his arm around her waist and pull her closer to him. She automatically shifts, so that she can move her legs as she tries to straddle his lap. Their lips join before it’s strictly convenient, and he almost doesn’t feel her knee in his thigh as her hand cups his face and holds it close. She tastes a bit like beer and surprisingly not at all like the Chinese takeout they’d had a couple hours ago. Because she’s on her knees, he has to lift his head to reach her but it also means he can slip his hands under that her top, run his fingers along her back.

A while ago, before Mac and arrived with Jim in tow, just after he and Maggie had gotten together, they brought this couple on the show for some sort of feel good segment in the D-block. It was pretty much opposite of news. They were like 102 and 106 or something ridiculous and had the longest living marriage in New York City. 85 years they’d been together, 84 years they’d been married. He remembers Elliot asking them what the best part of being married for so long was. She had said answered some stuff about kids and grandkids and having her best friend with her. The guy had just grinned and said “Kissing her is really nice.”

He thinks he gets it now.

They break for a moment, and she rests her forehead down against his and rubs a hand against his chest slowly. A smile threatens his face again, and he moves his head his head and kisses her neck gently. She moves her own head instinctively, giving him better access.

“What about the movie?” She asks; her voice is almost a whisper.

He pulls his head back to look at her, although he knows already she was half-joking. They stare at each other for a moment, challenging each other without saying what the stakes are. This is what they do. Sloan doesn’t stop often, moving, working, talking, thinking... and she’s bringing him along for the ride. She makes him work for it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, an old cliché about loving and never working spins but he shakes it out and focuses on her in front of him.

“I really don’t care about the movie,” he says, as though it is news to either of them.

Tomorrow morning, she’ll wake up before him to go to the gym before getting to the office earlier than almost anyone else. He doesn’t get it either. But he’ll bring her a coffee when he finally makes it in, at a more sensible hour. She’ll offer him a smile instead of a kiss because some designer/spawn of the devil thought it was a good idea to make glass walls.

He wonders quickly if Maggie will be weird about it tomorrow, or maybe she’ll try to apologise for being weird tonight. Or maybe she’ll avoid him altogether. He kind of wants to tell her about Sloan himself. Rather than her finding out because Mac slips up one day. To be honest, he kind of wants to tell a lot of people about him and Sloan, especially that one camera guy that keeps flirting with her. But also because last week they went grocery shopping together, she told him off for buying unhealthy cereal and this old lady came up to him and told him that they were cute together and he should hold on to Sloan.

He’d replied that he was fully intending to hold on to her, thankful that Sloan had gone to get a different cereal and couldn’t hear him. He’d never been so honest with a complete stranger.

“Don?” She asks and he wonders how long he's been distracted thinking about Sloan and not kissing Sloan.

He looks up at her. Her cheeks are a little flushed, and at some point she’d ditched her glasses and she is looking down at him with this half smirk and a raised eyebrow that could mean that she was turned on or that she thought he was being an idiot. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

He doesn’t say anything, partially because he is worried what could slip out at this point. Instead, he just reaches up to pull her closer and kisses her again. And again. Because, yeah. It _is_ really nice.


End file.
